Trooper Journals
by Rowen Hashiba Of Tenku Co
Summary: The Troopers write in their journals the day after Arago is defeated.
1. I Want To Be Someone, Sometime

Trooper Journal  
  
  
A/N: I didn't have the heart to call them diaries and embarass the guys. LOL. We should assume that this is an entry from the day after defeating Arago. Song-fic journals.. This ought to be.. uh, new..  
This is the first in a series of after-Arago journals by different Troopers, with different songs. See if you can guess who's this is.  
The song here is 3 Doors Down, "Be Like That". Fits the journal itself, ne?  
  
  
  
Trooper Journal  
Chapter One: I Wish To Be Someone, Sometime  
  
  
//He spent his whole life being to young to live the life that's in his dreams. At night he lies awake and he wonders why can't that be me?//  
  
I feel like I'm waking up from a nightmare today. Do you ever get that feeling, like you've been trapped in a nightmare for such a long time, and then suddenly you wake up, and everything seems, at least outwardly, to be so much better?  
But it's not.  
Arago is finished, the world is at peace. What do I do now? I can never be normal, never be "sane" again.  
Then again, I should be used to it by now. Everyone seems to think that I've gone completely insane since I dissappeared about two months ago.  
They don't know the half of it.  
  
//He said is life is filled with all these good intentions, and he's left a lot of things he'd rather not mention right now. Just before he says goodnight, he looks up with a little smile at me and he says...//  
  
I guess people think that someone kidnapped me or something. Come ON, people. Who would WANT me?  
My own parents don't give a damn, so why should anyone else? I might prefer to be kidnapped, than live at home all alone all the time, and get hurt whenever I'm not alone.  
Except when I'm with them. My friends. My real family.  
I can wish all I want that something could happen, that I could go back and stay with Nasuti and the others, but it will never happen. The guys all left, back to their own homes, and Nasuti is in college, living in a dorm somewhere and letting the furniture at the old Yagyu place collect dust.  
Somewhere along the lines I guess I lost it. Somewhere.  
I'm just nobody now, living in this crappy old house that collects dust despite the fact that two people live here, going to a school where the only way I get noticed is if I do something wrong, because they're too accustomed to me getting it right, so if I screw up or act out they notice, but not if I'm good.  
I'm nobody, but somebody. It's my secret burden. I saved the world but I can't say it. Not that I want to. I'm perfectly happy not being noticed, thanks.  
But, I wish to be someone, sometime.  
  
//If I could be like that, I would give anything just to live one day in your shoes. If I could be like that, what would I do? Oh, what would I do?//  
  
I wish I could be like Ryo or Shin. They aren't afraid to speak their minds, and they don't hide behind things like I always do, and they are so much more open. I hide behind the tattered remenence of the mask I once wore, concealing emotions that hinder me like a dagger in my spine.  
My heart is bleeding, but I can do nothing about it. My friends are all gone, back to their respective places of being, while I am left here, in this eternal Hell.  
Some things never change, but some do.  
Like me.  
  
//She spends her days up at the north hall, watching the people as they pass. And all she wants is just a little peice of history, is that too much to ask?//  
  
I guess maybe I am crazy. But if I am, then I suppose I truly have crossed the thin line between genious and madness, where I used to hold the proud title of balancing it.  
People wonder about me, where I get my nerve these days to contradict people, to stand up to bullies I had never deemed worth my time before, and I'll tell you: I changed. Something changed within me, sometime, during the battles with the Ma Sho and Arago.  
I changed, but I don't know if it was for better, or for worse. People accuse me of being too quiet, too cold, too.. mean.  
I guess war hardens you.  
  
//With a safe home, and a warm bed, on a quiet little street. All she wants is just that something to hold on to, that's all she needs.//  
  
Interesting, how I never noticed myself being this way before. I'm sitting here writing this and I think I'm pitying myself almost as much as Ryo doubts himself sometimes. Okay, I'm not thinking of them now. I won't. It will only make my loneliness worse.  
I could make friends at school, or in my neighborhood, but I don't, because it just wouldn't be the same as being with the guys. Waking up each morning to Nasuti and Shin's great cooking, reading some thick book while Seiji critisizes me about how much I read and how late I sleep, playing video games with Shuu, or hanging out with Ryo and Byakuen.  
I guess you never know how much you're going to miss a person until they're gone.  
  
//If I could be like that, I would give anything just to live one day in your shoes. If I could be like that, what would I do? Oh, what would I do?//  
  
Like I said, I'll never be truly sane, truly normal, again. Everything in my world now bears an unfamiliar edge to it, like I've never seen any of it before, although I know that I have.  
I just want a dream to believe in. Is that so much to ask?  
I wish to be someone, sometime...  
  
  
Sincerely,  
Touma Hashiba, Warrior of Tenku  
Yoroiden Samurai Trooper 


	2. I Pray For Tomorrow

Trooper Journal  
Chapter Two: I Pray For Tomorrow  
  
A/N: I don't own the song, which is "Walk On" by U2. I got a request for this, so see if you can guess who it is! It's actually easier than last time. *sigh*  
  
  
  
  
  
  
//And if the darkness is to keep us apart.//  
  
As I write this, I'm sitting bolt upright in my bed, my breaths harsh and my heartbeat a little too quick.  
These nightmares.. They haunt me. One moment I'm in my bed, fast asleep, nothing but a comforting darkness surrounding me. The next I'm battling for my life as Youja soldiers cut down my friends and allies like young trees.  
Always I wonder if it is some kind of a sign, or something. Are we needed again?  
Gods, I hope not.  
  
//And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off.//  
  
I apologize if my handwriting is a little bad.. I'm shaking terribly. Ever since I returned home, one thing my mother always sees is that I seem constantly afraid of something. No, Mother, not something. Someone.  
She also wonders where her quiet little boy went, to be replaced by me, a slightly cynical teenager who never seems to be around when he's needed.  
I guess I changed, too, like it or not.  
I'm different from them now, so different it's scary.  
I see people in the hall at school, their happy, smiling faces and sports and such, and all I see now is how different we are.  
If this is how unaware people are, then I pray for tomorrow's generation.  
  
//And if your glass heart should crack, and for a second you turn back, oh no, be strong..//  
  
I feel like a fish out of water. You know that expression? That's me.  
With the others I felt so relaxed, I could just completely be myself and free.  
Now, back home without them, I feel so alone, and I must again set up my facades of happiness and kindness that I don't truly feel.  
So much for mommy's little boy.  
He went and fought a war and now he's gone.  
  
//You're packing a suitcase for a place none of us has been, a place that has to be believed to be seen.//  
  
I miss Shuu and, yes, although I hate to admit it, even his little (little? Excuse me, did I say that?) jokes. I miss having to go find Seiji and make sure he doesn't meditate past breakfast time. I miss playing ball with Ryo, Yuli, and Byakuen. I even miss trying to wake up Touma in the morning.  
I miss my friends, that other family that I see occasionaly on vacations and summertime.  
I stay up late some nights, not used to the silence of a house that doesn't have four other teenagers, a tiger, an eight-year-old, and an eighteen-year-old in it. I'm not used to not listening to Ryo and Shuu's snoring, the music that sometimes plays when Touma is studying if he gets down to actually turning the stereo on, and the crashes that mean that Byakuen broke something. I miss that, too.  
My loneliness is not kind to me.  
  
//You could have flown away, a singing bird in open cage who will only fly, only fly, for freedom.//  
  
My mother worries about me now. She doesn't seem to think that I'm quite right in the head after my "leave of absence". Then again, she doesn't know that I fought a war against demons in that time, either. She thinks I was kidnapped, or something like that. Nope, sorry. You are the Weakest Link. Goodbye.  
Then again, how can anyone fight a war like that and ever be "right" again? How can anyone survive the mental and emotional scars it gave to my friends and I?  
Emotional scars. That's a bad term. You're trying to tell me that all I get from seeing my friends beaten to within an inch of their life is "emotional scars"? What bull. Absolute bull.  
The psychiatrist my mother took me to says I'm "depressed". Buddy, you don't know the half of it.  
I just thank my lucky stars that I don't have it as bad as Seiji (who's immense responsibilities doesn't allow mistakes) or Touma (who is far more "depressed" than I am, and has no one to talk to about it). And then I live.  
I must live.  
If Arago revives again, I will fight him.  
  
//Oh, and to know what it is if you never had one home, I can't say where it is but I know I'm going home, that's where the heart is.//  
  
"Home is where the heart is" they tell you. But my heart will never be in my home. It rests in the Yagyu home, my true home, where I live every moment I can, with my friends. That "other" family I have, to fall back on in matters no one in my family would understand. Like war, armors, weapons, and the Youjakai.  
So many things I just don't understand anymore. How can all these people take all of this for granted, when they have come so close to losing it all?  
Then again, they never knew.  
Yet we Samurai Troopers will carry the burden of that knowledge all of our lives.  
  
//And I know it aches and your heart it breaks, you can only take so much, walk on. Leave it behind. You've got to leave it behind.//  
  
I love to hear the ocean. It soothes me, makes me calm. It erases the worry, anxiety, and stress that I've had lately, putting in it's place a gentle calm that envelopes me.  
I need that more than ever, these days. With everything that has happened, it helps to have a little calm, a little time to think about things in a calm way, not sadly, or angrily, as I tend to do otherwise.  
The other Troopers are like brothers to me. I can't help but miss them, despite how much I try not to think of them. I can always picture Shuu in the kitchen, or outside, Seiji meditating on the big rock in the garden out back, Ryo playing with Byakuen in the yard, or Touma reading on the couch. It is so hard not to think of them.  
My friends.  
I wish that they could be with me now.  
  
//All that you fashion, all that you make, all that you build, all that you break, all that you treasure, all that you feel, all that you can't leave behind.//  
  
I just feel so out of place. So wrong.  
Like I said before, I feel like a fish out of water.  
I just want to live my life, with my friends, but I can't.  
Last month Nasuti closed up the old Yagyu place and headed for the college dorms, and no one sees each other much anymore.  
Everyone else in the world, meanwhile, is ignorant to us.  
Is this generation is so bad, then I will say what I said before:  
I pray for tomorrow.  
  
  
Sincerely,  
Shin Mouri, Warrior of Suiko  
Yoroiden Samurai Trooper 


	3. I Want The Nightmare To End

Trooper Journals  
Chapter Three: I Want The Nightmare To End  
  
  
A/N: I don't own the song, "The Ghosts Of You And Me" by BBMAK.  
  
  
  
  
  
//What am I supposed to do with all these blues haunting me everywhere, no matter what I do?//  
  
Well, today was a regular nightmare, like just about every other day since I returned.  
With Arago defeated, I guess it was just a matter of time until we all returned to our homes, but I guess I just didn't think it would be so soon. I don't know, it was just sudden for me.  
Too sudden.  
I was taken back to where I supposedly "belong", thrown back into a world that I can no longer cope with. My place isn't here. Everyone thinks it is, but my real place is with my friends.  
I wonder if they feel the same way?  
  
//Watching the candle flicker out in the evening glow, I can't let go. When will this night be over?//  
  
I guess I'm almost as bad as Seiji and Touma in one area: hiding what I really feel.  
I could be crying or screaming on the inside, but you'd never know from all my jokes and laughter. You would never be able to tell how I really felt.  
That's my secret. You won't tell, right?  
During the fight with Arago, I always tried to stay cheerful. Make jokes, make the others laugh, take some tension out of the situation. Sure, it didn't always work, but it was worth it to see their faces when it did. That was the reward for it.  
Now I have no one to make jokes with.  
My friends all went back to their homes, and Nasuti is off to college.  
We don't see each other much.  
I wish we did.  
  
//Seen a lot of broken hearts go sailing by, phantom ships lost at sea, and one of them is mine.//  
  
I think I need to be with my friends to be myself. D'you know what I mean? My friends are the best a guy could ask for, and without them I'm not me, not complete.  
I think you get my meaning, but if you don't, I'll sum it all up: I'm lonely without them.  
I feel like I can't be me without the others around to bring that out. I suppose Seiji is the same: I've seen him in public before, and he's not nearly as open (if you can call it that..) around others as he is with us.  
I'm more observant than anyone seems to think, and I notice more than people think I do. I know the others inside-out, especially Shin, my best friend in the world.  
To think that I would even attempt to write something like this didn't seem like it would happen, you know? But here I am, pen in hand, writing this. I can't believe it.  
I just don't write that much. I'm more of a talking person than a writing person, I guess.  
I just want the nightmare of reality to end.  
  
//Raising my glass I sing a toast to the midnight sky, I wonder why the stars don't seem to guide me.//  
  
Heh. I read over what I've written and I suppose it's all true. Too true, for my tastes.  
I almost wish I could be someone else sometimes. Then again, everyone has their problems. I think I'll stick to being me for now, thanks.  
I guess I have some pretty good friends outside of our little "group", but it really isn't the same. No one is as close to me as those four. My best friends ever.  
I miss them even as I'm writing this.  
I can put on the disguise of indifference but I can't act the part.  
  
//The ghost of you and me, when will it set me free? I hear the voices call, following footsteps down the hall, trying to save what's left of my heart and soul.//  
  
Life is harder now, without my allies and friends to back me up. So much for the almighty warrior of strength, huh?  
School seems even longer and harder to get through than usual these days, and I keep wondering what subjects the others are in at their schools, or if they have the same vacations as I do. We don't get together often, and more often than not at least one of us won't be there. I've only missed one meeting, because it was a busy day at the restaraunt and I was recruited by Mama to help out. Touma is missing from our meetings more often than the rest of us, mainly because of his mother's false promises to visit him. Then he calls the next day, apologizing for it.  
Sometimes I used to think that I had it rough, but all I do is think about any of my friends, and I realize just how lucky I am. There's Ryo. He's an orphan, and has to live with his grandparents. The thought of that being me is enough to give me nightmares. Shin, who's father died when he was little and his mom being sick all the time. Seiji, who is expected so much of that he's developed a fear of failure. And Touma, who's father is always at a lab and who's mother can't be bothered to drop by and see him, always telling him she will and leaving him waiting, alone, at the train station all night.  
I just wish I could do something to help them all out, but I guess that's what brings us all together:  
How different we all are.  
  
//Watching the candle flicker out in the evening glow, I can't let go, when will the night be over?//  
  
Well, I guess I'm coming to the conclusion that I need my friends to survive. But how, now that we are all apart?  
I don't really know, but at least I came to a conclusion.  
Anyway, I guess I'm closing this thing now.  
Like I said before, though, I just want the nightmare to end.  
  
  
Sincerely,  
Shuu Rei Faun, Warrior of Kongo  
Yoroiden Samurai Trooper 


	4. I Want To Believe

Trooper Journals  
Chapter Four: I Want To Believe  
  
A/N: I don't own the song "Crash And Burn" by Savage Garden. Totally appropriate song for the (seeming) theme of these: friendship. Don't you think? BTW, I think this is the first journal to actually mention the Ma Sho.. Hmmm..  
  
  
  
//When you feel all alone, and the world has turned it's back on you, give me a moment please to tame your wild wild heart.//  
  
I'm sitting up in bed now, heart pounding, sweating. Another night, another nightmare. Just the usual.  
I feel so helpless, a darkness thicker than a brick wall surrounding me as I try helplessely to breath, to scream, whatever. I can do nothing. The darkness closes around me, tighter, suffocating me even as I struggle. It's like quicksand, but worse. It's him.  
But then I always wake up, exactly like this. It has been this way ever since Arago was destroyed. Nightmares of Anubisu, evil again, trying to kill me, drowning me in his thick black net.  
Always in that nightmare I feel so alone. No one can help me, because they have gone.  
I wish my friends were here.  
  
//I know you feel like the walls are closing in on you, it's hard to find relief, and people can be so cold. When darkness is upon your door and you feel like you can't take anymore..//  
  
It was bad enough before all of this. Everyone insisting that I do exactly as I'm told, exactly how I'm told, being looked down upon for my appearence.. Now I deal with loneliness, as well.  
It's getting to be too much. I can't handle it.  
Man, the others would laugh if they heard me say that. I was always the calm, collected one. Everyone else would be just about to lose it, and I would be the one who kept it all together. Me and Touma, that is. Touma, my best friend.. I can't think about them. It's too hard.  
Everything is expected of me. I know that I can't let this stand in my way, but it's too hard not to. Grandfather noted my inattentiveness during practice, as well. I can't focus. My meditation brings only visions of them, or scenes from my recuring nightmares.  
Mother and Father don't know what to do with me anymore. They say that all the progress I made, from a rebellious youth to the young man I was before the fight with Arago, is gone. I am inattentive, and I seem to get angry at the slightest thing.  
Truth is, I feel like I'm losing it all. I'm losing myself.  
Gods, don't let that be true...  
  
//When you feel all alone, and a loyal friend is hard to find, you're caught in a one-way street with the monsters in your head.//  
  
It doesn't feel right here anymore. I'm so used to the freedom I felt when I was with the others at Nasuti's place that I must have forgotten somewhere along the lines how to fit in here, where I must be the heir to the clan, not myself, not me. Never me, unless I'm with them. With the others I can be myself, thank the Gods for that small favor.  
I could truly be me around them, not this other person I must become around outsiders, this person that is alien to me and yet familiar all the same.  
I learned how to be him, but sometime in the two months when we were fighting Arago I must have, for lack of a better term, "un-learned" how to be the other me.  
Sometimes I wish that I could go back to the way it was before Arago, but I instantly curse myself and remember that I wouldn't have met the others if I hadn't been a Samurai Trooper.  
My sisters worry about me, "how are you ever going to succeed with an attitude like that" they ask me when I am angry with them, and I reply "maybe I won't". Then Satsuki will go tell Grandfather, and I'll be in trouble, because I was cross with her. It's getting to be more often.  
At those times the "other me" slips away, I am myself for a moment, angry with them for acting as though they can not only tell me what to do, but tell me when, and how, and how to live my own life. When I am angry, I am myself.  
That's rare.  
  
//When hopes and dreams are far away and you feel like you can't face the day...//  
  
I feel like a living zombie. That's me. I walk and talk and breathe, but I feel little to nothing, and I am unresponsive to many things.  
That is the "other me". The real me is, I think, much more emotional than the other me who shows up when I am in need of a shield to block my true self from being hurt.  
Hurt by others. Hurt by my own family and their endless demands.  
I am not angry with them for it, though. I am the heir, after all. I cannot give into emotion all the time, or be rash with those who anger me. But I wish I could be me.  
I don't want to be the heir of the Date clan anymore.  
I want to be me, Seiji.  
  
//Because there has always been heartache and pain, and when it's over you'll breathe again, you'll breathe again.//  
  
Have you ever had one of those days where you just want to keel over and die? Now imagine having those days every day. That's my life. It's a living Hell.  
Morning meditation (damn you, guys, get out of my head!), then school (like I can concentrate on it anyway), the walk home (my only peaceful moment), and then practice (I'm starting to dislike Kendo). That's my entire day, five days a week. The other two are basically meditation, then practice, lunch, and then more practice. Some life. This isn't a life. It's more like an endless existance that always repeats itself. Some days I wake up and I wonder if I'm just repeating the last day.  
I long to be free from all of this, this pain that I feel whenever I think of my friends.  
I just want to believe that I'll see them again.  
  
//Let me be the one you call, if you jump I'll break your fall, life you up and fly away with you into the night. If you need to fall apart, I can mend a broken heart.//  
  
My friends and I were always so close. I could be myself around them. But they're gone now, back to their own homes. I wonder if they feel the way I do?  
I want them back. I want to go back to those days, living in the old Yagyu place with Ryo, Shin, Touma, Shuu, Jun, Nasuti, and Byakuen, all of us together. We were all so happy. But it will never be, or at least not for a few years. Nasuti headed off for college a while ago; she sent me a letter about it.  
We rarely meet now: one of us at least is always missing. Usually it's me or Touma. I can't make it because Grandfather insists that I keep social interactions to a minimum (not his actual words, but my basic interpretation of them), especially with those "rowdy boys" (Yayoi's description of my friends. What does she know, anyway?).  
I wish we could all be a "family" again.  
  
//If you need to crash then crash and burn//  
  
Family.. What is the meaning of the word "family" anyway? It means different things to all of us. Some, like my family, think that it is blood that makes a family. I beg to differ. We Samurai Troopers learned together that family does not mean blood. It is defined by caring and love. The Samurai Troopers are all brothers, myself included, and Nasuti is like an older sister to us. Jun is more like a younger cousin or brother. Something like that. We are a family, if only because we care for one another enough.  
I wish we could be together like that again.  
  
//You're not alone.//  
  
There are so many twists and turns in life that one never knows what to expect. You just have to take it as it comes.  
But, like I said before, I want to believe that Fate will throw us five together again.  
  
  
Sincerely,  
Seiji Date, Warrior of Korin  
Yoroiden Samurai Trooper 


End file.
